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Transistor Radio Turns 50
theodp writes "Before the iPod, there was the Regency TR-1. Fifty years ago Monday, tiny Indianapolis-based I.D.E.A. partnered with TI and shook the world with the first pocket-sized AM radio, so impressing IBM chief Tom Watson that he provided a $49.95 (roughly $345 in current dollars!), four transistor TR-1 to each of his senior managers to kick-start the company's transition from valves."
For a neat one page history of the shirt-pocket sized transistor radio along with a picture of the TR-1, go here: transistor radio
http://www.busyweather.com/
Valves = tubes in Brit-speak ...
And I, for one, want to welcome the arrival of our new iPod Overlords!
-Ocelot Wreak.
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
Especially considering more than half of that inflation occurred between 1970 and 1983.
Actually, it's not that bad.
345/49.95 = 6.9 (= 590% inflation)
power(6.9,1/50) = 1.04 (= 4% inflation).
4% inflation is not such a big deal.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Because in much of the USA in those days, drugstores were among the few stores permitted to do business on Sunday.
Seven-Elevens had tube testers as late as the mid-Seventies.
rj
A Transistor radio mini-history has a picture of an early transistor circa 1947. From the website:
...USA research scientists of Bell Laboratories, Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain managed, in December 1947, to invent a solid state device that they called THE TRANSISTOR. They succeeded in creating a completely new amplifying device just by adding a second contact point to the already popular CRYSTAL DIODE based on a piece of germanium crystal with a pointed "cat's whisker" touching its surface. In 1956 in recognition for their extraordinary work they were awarded the Nobel Prize. (Can't tell from the website if this one pictured was the very first one invented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Laboratories.)
Transistor inventors Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain were awarded a Nobel prize for their work in 1956. It's amazing how something so primitive went on to revolutionize the electronics industry.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest